Discusses the logic of the re‐emerging relationship approach to marketing and presents key strategic as well as tactical implications for a firm attempting to apply a relationship marketing strategy. Notes that major changes in the business philosophy may be required if relationship marketing...

Discusses the nature and sometimes negative consequences of the dominating marketing paradigm of today, marketing mix management, and furthermore discusses how modern research into, for example, industrial marketing and services marketing as well as customer relationship economics shows that...

Purpose – The field of service research has devoted considerable attention to the customer’s role as value creator, but there is a lack of research on understanding customers’ psychological processes in value creation. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of...

Purpose – The service management literature emphasizes the importance of communication, but language difficulties can make communicating in business settings more difficult. The purpose of this paper is to address consumer willingness to communicate in a second language to identity the...

Discusses some key challenges for service firms planning to go abroad and presents five different types of internationalization strategies for services, none of which are mutually exclusive. These are: direct export of services in terms of repairs and maintenance that are most appropriate to...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a framework – the Relationality Framework – for elaborating relational behaviour, in response to calls to address the ontological weaknesses identified in the extant value and value creation literature. Design/methodology/approach – The...

Purpose This paper aims to develop the foundation of a model for assessing relationship marketing readiness (RMR) and provide directions for such an assessment. Design/methodology/approach Based on the promise theory and service logic, the importance of the customer–firm touchpoints and...

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore and analyze the implications of reverse use of customer data for service-based business models. In their quest for competitive advantage, firms traditionally use customer data as resources to redesign and develop new products and services or...

Purpose This paper aims to evaluate the findings first put forward in the article “Internationalization strategies for services” (Grönroos, 1999) with the benefit of hindsight and to offer directions for further research and developments in this research area. Design/methodology/approach...